Biography

Gabriel Said Reynolds is Professor of Islamic Studies and Theology at Notre Dame. His research is focused above all on the Qur'an and Muslim-Christian relations. He wrote a dissertation on the remarkable Islamic history of Christianity of ʿAbd al-Jabbar (d. 1025); the dissertation won the Field Prize at Yale and was published (Brill 2004) as A Muslim Theologian in the Sectarian Milieu. Reynolds also prepared an introduction and translation of this history, published by (BYU 2008) as The Critique of Christian Origins.

At Notre Dame Reynolds has organized two international conferences (2005, 2009) on the Qur'ān, and edited the acts of the conferences as The Qur'an in Its Historical Context (Routledge 2008) and New Perspectives on the Qur'an: The Qur'an in Its Historical Context 2 (Routledge 2011). In 2012-13 Prof. Reynolds directed, along with Mehdi Azaiez, “The Qurʾan Seminar” a year-long project with a team of 28 international scholars who are producing a collaborative scholarly commentary on the Qurʾān (quranseminar.nd.edu). Currently Prof. Reynolds serves on the Executive Board of The International Qurʾanic Studies Association (iqsaweb.org).

Reynolds’ principal work on the Qurʾan is The Qur'an and Its Biblical Subtext (Routledge 2010). He has also published The Emergence of Islam (Fortress, 2012), a work written especially for courses which cover the Qurʾan, the life of the Prophet Muhammad, or the classical period of Islam.

At Notre Dame Prof. Reynolds teaches classes including “Foundations of Theology,” “Islam and Christian Theology,” “The Quran and Its Relation to the Bible,” “The Holy Land,” and “Islamic Origins.” He has also been a visiting professor at Université de Saint Joseph in Lebanon and Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium. Prof. Reynolds has conducted research and delivered lectures in cities throughout the Middle East, including Cairo, Jerusalem, Beirut, Damascus, Ankara, and Tehran. In his spare time he follows Notre Dame football, plays soccer, and watches Bollywood movies. Prof. Reynolds and his wife Lourdes have four children: Luke, Emmanuel, Theresa, and René.